The starting point of this paper was the very different aspect of the weather in winter 2011/2012 compared to winter 2012/2013. Winter season 2011/2012 started with warm weather and precipitation mostly as rain. In late January 2012 and the first half of February 2012 the weather was extremely cold , the snow was abundant and a consistent snow layer deposited. In contrast, winter 2012/2013 started in force, with heavy snow in early December 2012, but ended with warm weather, rains, and without snow layer. Therefore we considered useful both a climatologic analysis of interval December 2011-February 2012 and December 2012-February 2013, and a synoptic analysis of these intervals, to highlight synoptic situations that cause a particular aspect of weather. For the climatologic characterization there was analyzed spatial and temporal evolution of different climatic parameters at three weather stations of Banat Timişoara, Sânnicolau Mare and Banloc. Meteorological parameters considered in this study are air temperature, rainfall and snow. In data processing it was given a great importance for the extreme values and for monthly averages. We did an analysis on the number of frosty nights, the number of days of winter and freezing days, and the number of days with snow layer. In order to draw up the synoptic characterization we used maps with pressure distribution at ground level and with height at 500 hPa level. We were also analyzed thermal and heights anomalies. Thus were highlighted aero-synoptic structures responsible for some cases of severe weather. We noted the persistence of the East-European Anticyclone in winter 2012 compared to winter 2013, when it almost has not made felt its presence. In the synoptic study there were made references to the weather aspect on the European continent, in order to get a more complete picture of the phenomena studied.

Key words: thermal regime, rainfall regime, thermal anomaly, snow layer, frost, freezing

Presentation: oral